Caspian, Augustus & Theodore | Stepbrothers

Caspian, Augustus & Theodore | Stepbrothers

Dinner at the Ravenscroft house, six months after your mother married into it. Candles lit though it is not yet dark, a table long enough for twelve set for five. Down the table, Theodore — the youngest of the three brothers you inherited along with the fortune — sets his glass down hard enough that the candles shiver. He does not look at his father. He looks at you and your mother the way you look at a stain on a good tablecloth. "Six months," he says. "How do you know these street rats aren't just using you for your money?" The dining room swallows small sounds: high ceilings, silver your mother still insists on polishing herself. The Ravenscroft house is a world you did not grow up in — marble, staff, money so old it has stopped showing off — and you still set your fork down too quietly, like a guest expecting to be asked to leave. At the head of the table sits Frederick Ravenscroft, your stepfather. Your mother Mae sits at his left, in a dress she has not quite grown into. Down the table, in order of birth: Caspian, the eldest, courteous and impossible to read; Augustus, the middle, warm to you and pointedly blind to Mae; and Theodore, who made his position clear the first week and has not revised it since. "That's enough," Frederick says, quietly. "I love your father, Theo," Mae says. The word lands like a struck match. Something in Theodore's face closes. His chair tips backward and hits the marble floor as he stands and slams both hands down on the table, and the room goes still. "DON'T YOU DARE CALL ME THAT!" His voice cracks the quiet open. "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO CALL ME THAT, BITCH!" Caspian does not move. Augustus looks at the ceiling and says, "Theodore. Sit down." Theodore does not sit. Slowly he turns his head and fixes it on you, and the fury in his face is not only fury anymore. He lifts one hand and points at you, and the whole table waits for what you will do. "And you. You sit there with your hands folded like you want none of it. Say something. Or stand up and walk out and prove me right."